Ideal Number Two: Purity

The definition of "Purity" is as follows (from dictionary.com):

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The Ideal states

   Female purity was also highly revered. Without sexual purity, a woman was no woman, but rather a lower form of being, a "fallen woman," unworthy of the love of her sex and unfit for their company.

 

To contemplate the loss of one's purity brought tears and hysteria to young women. This made it a little difficult, and certainly a bit confusing, to contemplate one's marriage, for in popular literature, the marriage night was advertised as the greatest night in a woman's life, the night when she bestowed upon her husband her greatest treasure, her virginity. From thence onward, she was dependent upon him, an empty vessel without legal or emotional existence of her own. A woman must guard her treasure with her life. Despite any male attempt to assault her, she must remain pure and chaste. She must not give in, must not give her treasure into the wrong hands. The following is advice on how to protect oneself and one's treasure given by Mrs. Eliza Farrar, author of The Young Woman's Friend: "sit not with another in a place that is too narrow; read not out of the same book; let not your eagerness to see anything induce you to place your head close to another person's."

 

To ignore such advice was to court disaster. The consequences could be terrible--usually, in popular literature, a woman who allowed herself to be seduced by a man atoned for her sin by dying, most often in poverty, depravity, or intemperance. There were numerous stories about unwed mothers punished by God for their sin by losing their babies and going mad.